Who it Caters to

Ever wonder who would win in a fight Jotaro from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure or Yami Yugi from Yu-gi-oh!? Nor have we, but we get to see just that in one of the largest Shonen Jump collaboration games titled Jump Force. Players will be able to see over 16 different franchises from the Jump world including fighters from Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece and many more! Did we peak your interest? If we did, you can find out how Jump Force plays by reading our full review down below!

What to Expect

Jump Force is a 3D fighting game with an emphasis on throwing various Shonen Jump warriors into the battlefield. Players can enjoy 3 versus 3 bouts with teams made up of the favorite Shonen Jump characters! You can also make your own Jump Force warrior in story mode that embodies various skills and abilities from other Jump warriors! Go online to test your skills against others or play offline and enter our world fused with Jump’s world!

Story

The Shonen Jump world is about to collide with our own in Jump Force. When a strange new threat called Venoms begin to attack cities alongside infamous evildoers like Frieza, it takes a slew of heroes to fight back. Join alongside Goku, Luffy and Naruto as they fight against the approaching tide and try to save both worlds from utter ruin. The battle begins in Jump Force!

Gameplay

Jump Force has been a collaboration many fans—us included—have been eagerly awaiting ever since it was announced a while back. The idea of having famous Shonen Jump warriors duking it out in a 3 vs 3 fighter just sounded like the perfect recipe for an amazing fighting title. With Jump Force finally in our grasp, you can bet we here at Honey’s Anime sat down and played several hours’ worth to share our thoughts with you readers out there. Here is our review of Jump Force for the PS4. Trust us, you don’t want to miss what we have to say on this long-awaited fighting project.

As is apparent quite quickly, Jump Force centers around the concept of having popular Shonen Jump franchises thrown together in a 3D fighting game. Players will create their own heroes, give them a fighting style and enter the world of Goku, Luffy, Naruto and a plethora of other familiar faces to Jump fans. The main story itself centers around your hero—or heroine—being brought back to life via the powers of the umbras cube. From here, you’ll choose between three factions—Alpha, Beta and Gamma—all of which are represented by the three main heroes mentioned above. This set up begins the good and bad of Jump Force…we’ll start with the good and work our way to the bad.

As a fighting game, Jump Force is quite competent. Similar to most 3D brawlers—like Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm—players choose teams of three and fight with a wide spread arsenal of characters. To keep things simple, Jump Force relies on using a very simple 3D fighting set-up that is seen in tons of other fighters. Each warrior might play slightly different from one another but on a whole, each has the same light, heavy, grab and special attack set up. As you fight you gain a meter that allows for a special move and or the ability to boost your stats via an awakening mode. We did love that your main character has a blank slate of abilities allowing him or her to be given almost all of the other Jump Force characters skills and allows players to make a warrior that is truly pretty powerful.

As you play Jump Force, you’ll find the story mode will be the brunt of your single player experience as you fight against heroes and villains alike from the Shonen Jump world. Each win gives you gold that can be spent on customization items for your warrior as well as new abilities and skills that boost their stats. Your best bet before purchasing skills and abilities is to fight as the various other heroes as you unlock them and see what skills you prefer before you end up wasting gold on a skill that ultimately doesn’t mesh with your own play style. Jump Force is truly pretty robust as a fighting game, offering tons of modes—story, free battles, online and offline fights—which gives players a nice amount of content for their dollar.

The last strong element of Jump Force comes in its graphical element. Outside of cutscenes—which we’ll mention soon enough don’t you worry—Jump Force looks down right spectacular. All of the heroes and villains are well animated in combat and look spot on to their original manga/anime counterparts. Unleashing Vegeta’s Big Bang Attack or Goku’s Spirit Bomb look downright marvelous and never gets old. Ichigo going into his special Bankai form and or seeing Naruto enter Sage Mode put smiles on our faces every time we did it during battle. Plus, hearing the original voice actors/actresses for almost all of the characters makes Jump Force pretty dang loyal to fans of the franchise.

Unfortunately, with all that Jump Force does well…it also fails in many of its elements equally as bad. The first major flaw of Jump Force comes in the story itself. While we didn’t expect an award-winning script—many collaboration fighters have weak stories—we did expect a story that at least made us want to play all the way through story mode. The story itself is just laughable with no shocks other than how mediocre it comes off at the end of the day. Even when Light Yagami appears, you know he’s not going to be a good guy and it lacked even the impact we had hoped we’d get after having seen the trailers with his looming presence over the battlefield.

Speaking of lack of impact, that’s another issue we had while playing Jump Force. While combat works very well and feels solid—dodging is smooth and unleashing co-op-based attacks or switches rock—it doesn’t have any oomph behind it. A lot of attacks tend to feel flat and it almost feels like you’re fighting against punching bags then legendary warriors. This is kind of fixed when fighting against real people online but even then, it doesn’t feel as impactful as we would have liked.

The biggest crime of Jump Force though is the beautiful animation coming off flat and ridiculous when you’re playing the story. We said it before, Jump Force looks incredible most of the time but when cutscenes occur, the ball game changes…poorly. Characters will move in bizarre ways and tend to lack almost any emotion behind their words or actions. All you need to do—after reading this review of course—is search up Jump Force cutscenes and you’ll see tons of hilariously bad clips of characters moving and acting during these moments. Jump Force looks beautiful, but when the story comes into being, those looks tend to drop harshly.

Wrapping up our gameplay section, we do have a few more minor gripes with Jump Force to mention. The first is the loading times. Pausing the game to go into customization menus or going from scene to scene all results in lengthy load times. Add to this online lag—which we experienced several times—and loading into a long-awaited battle just feels like a punch to the gut. Are these issues game breaking? No, but they do ruin the fun to be had with Jump Force.

Honey's Gameplay Consensus:

Here’s the reality, folks; Jump Force has a lot to love for fans of Shonen Jump and the various franchises within. Seeing Luffy duke it out with Sasuke or Goku battling Gon just screams dream come true. Graphically and gameplay wise, Jump Force excels with solid fighting mechanics that while not game changing, work better than we initially expected. However, Jump Force is plagued with issues that range from poor storytelling and various other game issues. Jump Force was made with fans in mind but even fans might have some issues with what they are presented with. We recommend Jump Force to anyone who loves Shonen Jump and wants a solid fighting game but be sure to not expect a perfect or close to perfect fighter.

Honey's Pros:

Use of most of the original voice actors/actresses is wonderful to hear

Plenty of customization options to make for the perfect warrior in looks and skills

Multiple gameplay modes for a plethora of things to do

Honey's Cons:

Strange and bizarre animation and graphics during cutscenes

Online has occasional lag

Fighting tend to sometimes lack impact or feel

Terrible load times

Predictable story with no strong moment to be had

Honey's Final Verdict:

Let’s get this straight folk, Jump Force is a solid fighting game with a lot to enjoy. That being said, it’s far from being great and barely makes the good grade. Jump Force is plagued with problems that reach into every faucet of the game which makes every good element equally poor. If you’re a fan of One Piece, Dragon Ball Z, Bleach and/or any Shonen Jump mentioned—there’s nearly 16 of them with 40 characters to be seen in Jump Force—then you’ll love Jump Force and want to buy it regardless of anything we mentioned above. Die hard fighting game fans though might have too many issues with Jump Force and thus, it won’t be the fighter their looking for at the end of the day. Are you interested in Jump Force and/or have played it already? Let us know in the comments below! Be sure to keep stuck to our hive for even more game and anime related articles courteous of us here at Honey’s Anime!

Writer

Author: Aaron

Hey everyone I’m Aaron Curbelo or Blade as I’m called by my YouTube Subscribers. I’ve been an anime/manga fan since I was a young kid. In terms of anime I have watched nearly a thousand shows and have read hundreds of manga series. I love writing and honestly was so happy to join Honey’s Anime to get a shot to write articles for such a wonderful site. I’m a firm believer in respect in the anime community being the most important embodiment we should all have. We all love anime and we have varying opinions of series but we should respect one another for those differences! Life is too precious to spend it making needless arguments in a community that should be the shining example of loving an amazing medium. I hope as a writer for Honey’s Anime I can bring you folks some amazing articles to read and enjoy!